How fitting is it that the title to usher in the age of video games still remains one of the most popular games today? Tetris reigns above all other games that changed the world simply because of its household name status. Gamers and non-gamers alike know it and revere it. But how did it get to this point? In many ways, Tetris is an outlier. It stands unique as a game with simple-yet-deep gameplay that has endured a shelf life unmatched by any other video game. Some would even consider it to be the Chess or Go of video games.

Today we'll take a closer look at AMD's A8-7600 APU Kaveri APU, more specifically we'll examine the GPU performance you can expect from this frugal APU. AMD still enjoys a comfortable lead over Intel in terms of integrated graphics performance and as an added bonus AMD APUs support Dual Graphics, allowing users to boost performance by adding a low-end discrete Radeon to their system. Some games support Mantle and the user can see considerable performance boost in such games. We will provide a comparison between the new drivers and the drivers which were available when the A8-7600 APU was released back in January. Also our tests support AMD’s official line – speedy memory makes a big difference.

In case you haven’t been following developments on the iGPU front, you could be in for a nice surprise, as integrated GPUs have come a long way over the past couple of years.

At the beginning we will give a basic info for the users not familiar with the Kaveri APU architecture. The company announced the 65W A8-7600 chip months ago, but it is still not available. The more powerful A10-7850 and A10-7700K, both 95W parts, have been on sale for months. They are currently the only Kaveri desktop APUs available in retail. The second batch of AMD Kaveri APUs, announced last week, includes the A4-7300, the A6-7400K and the A10-7800. A new A6-7400 is up for pre-order in the US, but it is still not available. The A6-7600 is a dual-core chip. It has 1MB of L2 cache, unlocked multiplier, 65W TDP and it is clocked at 3.5GHz, or 3.9GHz on Turbo. The chip packs Radeon R5 graphics clocked at 726MHz.

Antec are well known for creating high performance cases and PSUs, with many of their models receiving awards from us in the past. In recent times they have also created some high performance liquid coolers and even branched out into audio products. Today we have a roundup of a little of everything from them… Bluetooth audio devices, a couple of coolers, two different PSUs and their high end Nineteen Hundred case.

The new ASUS GTX 780 STRIX introduces completely passive operation when the card is idling, which provides a noise-free experience. GTX 780 STRIX 6 GB also features twice the memory capacity of the regular GTX 780 and a large overclock out of the box.

Today we review the highly anticipated Asus ROG Swift PG278Q. This 27 inch Nvidia G-SYNC monitor runs at WQHD 2560×1440 resolution, features a 144hz refresh rate and a 1ms (gtg) response time to cater to the most demanding gamer. The panel features a ‘turbo’ button to automatically select refresh rates of 60hz, 120hz and 144hz. The monitor is due for release very soon, and is already available on pre-order for £719.99 inc vat from Overclockers UK (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-070-AS) . As well as our usual technical analysis of the panel, today we partner the PG278Q with the ultra high end Asus GTX780Ti ROG Matrix graphics card. Does the PG278Q allow you to safely ignore the new slew of Ultra HD 4K panels for the forseeable future?

The Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro's are a new and interesting headphone from the world famous audio company Beyerdynamic. In this article we’re here to see if the Custom One Pro's can really bring enthusiast quality audio to the masses at a reasonable price point. Looking into their Bass response modes, portability, build quality and customization options, we’re very curious about these new cans from the prestigious company.

P user, I am talking to you. In April 2014, your favorite operating system stopped being officially supported by Microsoft. Now, there's no reason for panic, but this is a good opportunity to start considering alternatives. Without going into too many details, the free and exciting option is to try Linux.

Indeed, today, we will demonstrate how to dual-boot an existing Windows XP installation with the latest edition of Linux Mint, a highly popular Linux distribution, while retaining all the important user data you have. Naturally, this is somewhat of an advanced topic, so you might need to invest a little time reading, but overall, the exercise should be worth the effort. In the end, you will have a fully functional dual-boot setup for all your needs, with XP on one end and a modern, stylish Linux Mint 17 Qiana on the other. Let's rock.

Gamers are always curious to know what benefit they get from an expensive CPU in terms of frames per second. In this series of articles we will have a look at different CPUs, running at different clock speeds and with each article we will compare two CPUs. These CPUs will be place in a test system that's been equipped with no less than three high-end graphics cards in order to open the GPU bottleneck.﻿

Intel launched its Pentium 20th Anniversary Edition G3258 processor at Computex in June. The processor pays homage to the Pentium name by having an unlocked multiplier so that it is more overclocker friendly. Needless to say, since its availability, many enthusiasts have been pushing this humble sub-£50 dual-core processor to see exactly what kinds of overclocks are possible.

HEXUS reviewed the Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition G3258 a month ago and found it to be "Decent in out-of-the-box form and providing Core-like numbers when readily overclocked to 4GHz and beyond," concluding that "there's little reason for many readers to spend more". However our processor sample only got to a final stable speed of 4.4GHz using the stock fan and a small voltage tweak. Others have been pushing the chip harder with all sorts of cooling solutions and tweaks…

When QNAP sent over the TS-559 Pro+ to us for review in September 2010, I decided it was a wise choice to buy a new set of hard drives to go along with the NAS. My requirements were simple; I wanted something reasonably power efficient, reasonably fast, and reasonably priced to run in RAID 5. As it turned out, my "simple" requirements were actually not as simple as I thought. Apparently, regular desktop drives may have problems in RAID, and I was not about to spend two to three times the price on enterprise grade hard disks just to reduce the risk of it dropping out of the array. After scuttling through conflicting opinions of many people online, and eventually consulting with engineers at QNAP, I decided to settle for a trio of Western Digital Blue 1TB hard drives. Sure, they did not support time limited error recovery, but at least it fulfilled all my other requirements. Two hundred dollars later, my 2TB RAID 5 array was built, and after all these years, I never had a single issue. Ahh, the wonders of life. Well, just because I had no real issues, does not mean the solution could not have been better. As dedicated network attached storage systems became more and more popular, disk manufacturers finally took notice, and began to release products to better accommodate the needs of the people. Earlier last month, we have reviewed the Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB, a drive that attempts to strike a balance between speed and efficiency. We have also covered HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB, which tips the scale more to the performance side of things. Today, we will take a look at the Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB, which is designed to undercut the competition in price. How well will it compete? Let the benchmarking begin.

While the enthusiast segment is no stranger to LG smartphones, for the most part LG hasn't received nearly the amount of attention that Samsung has. At first, it doesn't make much sense. After all, LG is almost as big as Samsung. Both are chaebols, with enormous resources and power that few other companies have. Starting from the Optimus G, it seems that LG has shipped some of the best hardware in the industry, leveraging all the branches of the company from LG Innotek to LG Display to make a product that was easily equal to or better than the competition at the time.

One of the real issues that LG faced was a credibility gap. After the Optimus 2X and 4X HD, LG simply lacked credibility amongst the enthusiast audience. Without this audience and without the marketing push that other OEMs had, LG phones simply didn&rsquo;t sell. Fortunately, things have gotten better since those days. The G2 brought significant attention to LG phones, and if anything, LG has been the sleeping giant in the industry. LG&rsquo;s displays have been one of the best in the industry, and as an Android OEM they've consistently executed well on hardware. The immense popularity of the Nexus 4 and 5, even amongst mainstream consumers is surprising, especially because they were supposed to be developer devices.

Today is a great day in the eTeknix office, as I’m very happy to have yet another high-end chassis from the legendary Thermaltake. The Core V71 was first seen earlier this year at CES 2014 and we saw it again at Computex in Taipei a couple of months ago, now we’re finally able to get hands on with this beast and put it to the test.

The Thermaltake Core V71 has been designed with customisation in mind, its capable of handing extreme gaming rigs that have been built around extreme levels of air or water cooling. It features extensive radiator support and comes equipped with three powerful 200mm fans as standard, which already sets it apart from many competing brands in terms of air cooling. Of course all the support included for high-end builds will come at a premium, as you can expect to pay in the region of £120 for this beast, but when it comes to premium grade system builds, that really is only a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of your other components such as graphics cards and a CPU. Either way, it will be interesting to see just how much return on investment you can get for paying a premium on your chassis and compared to products of a similar spec from the likes of Corsair and Fractal, it’s still competitively priced.

Stopping for a moment I wondered what kind of case was in the black bag, but more importantly why was it a black bag to begin with. Well I removed the case from the box and looking at the bag saw a nicely woven material with the Thermaltake logo and the computer case name -- Urban T81 ("Simple, Yet Elegant") -- printed in white lettering on one side. OK, here is a company that is willing to put forth a statement of their effort to present one of their products with some flair.

So I remove the black bag and am presented a full tower case with a matte black brushed look to all the metal and plastic parts except along the upper and bottom beveled rims of the case, where we find a glossy black accent finish. Taking a quick look at the case features I found a case able to handle several variations of 120, 140 and 200mm case fans, a fan control hub, up to 8 HDD drives and many more options. Thermaltake states the Urban T81, "is not merely a PC chassis, more like a creation of modernism."

Well, take a few minutes now and follow along as I delve into the Thermaltake Urban T81 case to see the "Simple, Yet Elegant" design. Hopefully you will enjoy my observations as much as I will.

If you have a Windows tablet or a device with a touchscreen, you will need to adapt to using the new PC Settings in Windows 8.1. The PC Settings allow users to do a great deal of Windows administration and customization with just a few taps (or clicks).

The PC Settings take a great deal of the tediousness out of trying to operate your device using your fingers. They offer large targets that don’t require a lot of accuracy otherwise afforded by a mouse or similar pointing device.